The court decided the men’s commander, a chief constable, was involved in the incident but did not sentence him to any detention, instead reducing his rank from chief constable to constable and withholding two pay raises, said Vikas Chandra, a BSF spokesman.

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“It’s a very big punishment,” Mr. Chandra said.

Human rights groups did not agree. “The system they’re maintaining is institutionalizing impunity,” said Kirity Roy, secretary of MASUM, an Indian rights advocacy group that obtained the video and publicized it.

The 11-minute video, taken on a cell phone, allegedly by the perpetrators, gave a rare window into abuses that human rights groups say are commonplace on the porous border between India’s West Bengal state and Bangladesh, across which scores of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and cattle rustlers pass each day.

It shows the constables stripping a Bangladeshi man naked, trussing him to a stick and beating him repeatedly while he pleads for mercy. The video caused barely a ripple in India’s media or among politicians when it emerged in January, a fact which human rights groups say shows how desensitized India has become to cases of abuse by the BSF on the border.

The court-martial verdict has not been reported in the Indian media.

In Bangladesh, the video caused an outcry and created a headache for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who has been working hard to improve relations with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government. It’s also an embarrassment for Mr. Singh who in 2007 stated a “zero tolerance” policy for human rights abuses.

“The unfortunate incident at India-Bangladesh border was investigated by the Border Security Force within their jurisdiction. The Ministry of External Affairs had regretted the incident and asked the BSF to conduct an enquiry which held a court martial. The Prime Minister’s Office did not play any role in this affair,” the office said in a statement Monday.

Activists who follow these events say scores of other abuses, including shooting incidents involving BSF constables, have gone unpunished in recent years.

India says it’s making progress in reducing the killings. Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram said last month after a meeting in New Delhi with his Bangladeshi counterpart, Sahara Khatun, there had been a “dramatic decline” in shootings.

Mr. Chidambaram acknowledged, however, there were still three incidents on the border in the past eight months, leading to the deaths of four people. He said the deaths were unavoidable after BSF personnel came under attack by Bangladeshis. India and Bangladesh are planning joint patrols in sensitive parts of the frontier to attempt to further quell violence.

The latest video also focuses attention on India’s military court system, which even India’s Supreme Court has criticized for failing to take sufficient action against officers accused of rights abuses.

In January, the Supreme Court chided the army for blocking criminal proceedings against five soldiers accused of murdering five men in Kashmir, while failing to mount an internal trial of the men.

Rights groups say India should try more of these cases through the criminal court system rather than opaque army courts. In Kashmir, Chief Minister Omar Abdullah has been pushing – so far without success – for the partial withdrawal of laws that shield armed forces in the state from prosecution through the normal court system.

Human Rights Watch, the New York-based advocacy, urged the government in January to prosecute the men involved in the latest video, saying it was a test case of whether the BSF is above the law.

But the armed forces has pushed back against allowing its men to be tried through normal courts.

What do you think? Was the punishment meted out to the BSF personnel sufficient? Let us know in the Comments.

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India Real Time offers analysis and insights into the broad range of developments in business, markets, the economy, politics, culture, sports, and entertainment that take place every single day in the world’s largest democracy. Regular posts from Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones Newswires reporters around the country provide a unique take on the main stories in the news, shed light on what else mattered and why, and give global readers a snapshot of what Indians have been talking about all week. You can contact the editors at indiarealtime(at)wsj(dot)com.